Another anachronism? A word on irregulars and asymmetry

I just finished reading John Mueller's "The Banality of 'Ethnic War'" (pdf), which is, I think, a pretty good debunking of the lazy and misleading clash-of-civilizations/ancient-ethnic-hatreds explanation for allegedly communal violence. It was published in 2000, and has some hints of the argument that would later emerge at the root of Mueller's less-compelling 2004 book The Remnants of War. This latter work basically argues that humanity is getting over war, at least in the developed world, and that what passes for it in the modern era is just the sort of criminality and sociopathy that Mueller convincingly argues (in "Banality") drove the conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda.

While Mueller's general argument strikes me as sound, I'm mystified with the way the paper is suffused with what seems like an unjustified optimism about the evolution of human culture away from mass violence. He goes to quite considerable lengths at times to explain and rationalize the supposed centrality of socially anomalous irregulars (noting repeatedly, almost without exception, that such groups are "often drunken") to modern conflict; the quest to absolve "regular people" of guilt for genocidal atrocities is, for me, alternatingly encouraging and desperate.

The concluding section of the paper, entitled "Extrapolations," is where the future "remnants" argument is most clearly delineated.

[...] Martin van Creveld has proclaimed [in The Transformation of War, 1991] that we have entered a "new era," in which "war will not be waged by armies but by groups whom we today call terrorists, guerrillas, bandits, and robbers." Banditry and depredations by roving militias are hardly new of course, but [Michael] Ignatieff and van Creveld may be correct in suggesting that regular soldiers are no longer engaging in combat nearly as much as they used to. It is not, as van Creveld would have it, that low-intensity conflict has risen to "dominance." Rather it is that, increasingly, warfare of that sort is the only kind still going on--war by thugs is the residual, not the emerging, form.

Moreover, if some states (like Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Rwanda) came to depend on irregulars, it is not because they find this approach preferable, but because they are unable to muster an adequate number of recruits to field a real army. And if, again like Serbia and Rwanda, but unlike Croatia and Bosnia [which were, in this telling, saved from early dependence on the ethnic protection rackets of purportedly nationalist militias by military professionalization and the intervention of professional western forces, respectively], they continue to rely on such corrupt, opportunistic, inept, and often cowardly forces, they are likely eventually to go down in pathetic defeat.

To which I can only respond: are we quite sure?

If irregulars are "corrupt, opportunistic, inept, and often cowardly" by definition, then who can argue? But this strikes me as a bit of truistic question-begging to justify Mueller's optimism about the obsolescence of war: if warring parties are increasingly dependent on marginalized elements of society as instruments of violence, and those elements are increasingly detached from the martial attributes that generate combat effectiveness, then surely they'll be easily defeated by capable peacekeepers or police -- the at least minimally-capable tools of the advanced and morally elevated state... right? If all that is true, though, then we have to ask: why is it taking so long?

What I really want to focus on, though, is the section I've italicized above: "if some states... came to depend on irregulars, it is not because they find this approach preferable, but because they are unable to muster an adequate number of recruits to field a real army." This qualifying conditionality -- "if some" -- is a bit of rhetorical deftness, as it's impossible to deny that some states may have employed irregulars because of problems with recruiting, morale, or sustainment of regular forces.

But should we take this to mean that all states -- or even most states (or sub-state combatants) -- that rely on irregulars do so because of personnel inadequacies? This contention is pretty plainly false: from the post-November 2001 Taliban to the Fedayeen Saddam and associated insurgents to the Jaish al-Mahdi to the Kurds in Turkey and Iran to Lebanese Hizballah irregulars in the 2006 war to the dispersed and civvie-clad Libyan regime forces in 2011, the last decade has seen a virtual parade of organized, dedicated, coordinated fighters choosing to array themselves in irregular fashion and adopt asymmetric tactics against much stronger adversaries.

Some "wars" may be fought by disorganized, drunken thugs because they're the only ones who will show up. Participants in many others, though, depend on irregulars as a tactical adaptation devised to increase fighters' survivability and lethality. van Creveld, as it turns out, is almost certainly closer than Mueller to the truth.

The Inevitable Balkanization of the Already-Balkanized Balkans (Updated)

The current issue of Foreign Affairs sports a real gem of analysis buried amid all of the articles on economics and discussions of the resilience of Cold War institutions. Patrice McMahon and Jon Western discuss Bosnia 14 years after the signing of the Dayton accord. Having spent last week in the Balkans, I would have to say the issues they raise are poignant and present serious security risks to Europe.

To say that I'm not an expert on the Balkans would be a gross understatement, especially given how many true experts there are. Other than the occasional article in the newspaper, my previous exposure was predominately during my cadet days when I thought my career would culminate as a platoon leader somewhere in the region. Of course, Iraq and the Middle East myopia it induced in the U.S. military relegated the region to the purview of the National Guard as a mission all but complete.

But it is no where near complete. While the signing of the Dayton accord and the initiation of the Kosovo Air Campaign will remain relevant historical events in the Balkans, they were the beginning, not the end of any Euro-American efforts there. These two events separated the combatants, but time has not tempered ethnic tensions because the politics have not yet been solved. Especially as the politics were devised by the West to separate the ethnic groups in the hope that time would temper their relations. Talk about hopeful.

Bosnia is on the brink of collapse as Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims try to outmaneuver each other for political advantage. In Kosovo, the region of Mitrovica is rife with ethnic tensions as the Serb majority defy Albanian attempts at pulling the area under the control of Prishtina. Of course with the assistance of Serbia itself, still upset at Western vilification of their nation. While Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro seem to be doing fairly well (with EU ascendancy quite possible in some cases), history has shown that conflict in the Balkans knows no borders just as ethnic ties do not.

The current political situation has been compounded by a number of factors in addition to the ethno-political divisions cited above (some listed in the article, some of my own conjecture). First is the cacophony of aid to the region in the mid to late 1990s. Everyone wanted to help with donor assistance or military aid. But the aid surpassed the local capacity to handle it. Second is that this cacophony of aid was on occasion disguised for instituting donor influence to gain strategic advantage. Third is Russia's patronage of Serbia. With Russia's energy influence on Europe and the NATO/Russia tensions over both Georgia and the Ukraine, no one wants to incite global conflict over the Balkans. Again. Fourth, and possible most important, is the aforementioned myopia on the "War on Terror" or whatever we're calling it today.

The reality is that without true Western leadership, as called for in the article, the region could continue to fragment and fall into conflict again. It is not a problem that can be ignored any longer, nor be labeled as a success or mission complete. As true in any post-conflict environment, especially those past the attention of the intervening nations' public, McMahon and Western put it best: "It is impossible to create a functional state that can be sustained and governed by local actors merely by throwing money and resources at the problem. As the experience in Bosnia has proved, state building is not a problem to be solved but a process to be managed."

Update: Positroll makes note in the comments that Slovenia has been a member of the EU since 2004 and Croatia has been a candidate since 2004 and received NATO membership in 2009. Thanks for the correction and I'll spend a little more time on Wiki in the future.